Chapter 127: The Prison of Absolute Blades
Sentomaru showed no fear when he saw the sharp saber in Axel's hand.
He planted his feet apart, bent his knees, and lowered his center of gravity. Both arms stretched forward, palms open and facing out.
Then his body moved.
For a man built like a fortress barrel, Sentomaru was shockingly nimble. His feet slid and shifted across the ground with a strange sideways rhythm, almost like a crab skittering over sand. At the same time, Haki wrapped around his palms, turning them into weapons that carried both offense and defense.
He thrust both palms forward.
The air cracked.
A heavy blast rushed toward Axel without Sentomaru needing to touch him at all.
Axel's Observation Haki caught the trajectory at once.
Dodging the palm itself would have been easy. A slight shift of his shoulder, a small step to the side, and Sentomaru's hands would miss.
But Axel did not treat the attack so casually.
The danger was not only in those Haki-coated palms.
It was the distance.
Sentomaru's attack did not require direct contact. That palm strike carried an outward force, something similar to an external projection of Haki. If Axel dodged according to the palm's physical path alone, he would still be struck by the invisible impact that followed it.
So he moved farther.
A full body length to the side.
The blast tore past him, kicking up dust and shattered stone where he had stood.
Sentomaru's eyes sharpened.
He had been read.
The old man was right. This kid was not simple.
Before Sentomaru could continue his strange footwork, Axel stepped in after dodging and swung the Marine saber in his hand.
The blade cut in from the side, quick and clean.
Sentomaru twisted around. His gaze focused, and Haki surged.
Clang!
The saber struck something before it reached his body.
It was not the kind of Armament Haki that coated the skin black. Instead, it formed an invisible shield around him, deflecting the blade before it could bite into flesh.
Even so, the force behind Axel's swing was no joke.
Sentomaru's round body slid back slightly under the impact. He did not let himself stumble. With a quick movement, he returned to his previous position, grabbed the enormous axe that had landed behind Axel, and held it ready.
Axel did not chase.
He withdrew at once, eyes narrowing as he studied the result.
So things he could not understand truly were difficult to control.
Hawkins's straw doll was one example. Even when Axel held it in his hand, he felt nothing from it. Since he had yet to master Armament Haki, his mind could not fully analyze the principles behind it. Naturally, he could not manipulate what he did not understand.
And if he could not interfere with Armament Haki, then close combat against someone like Sentomaru would not give him a clear advantage.
Sentomaru claimed to have the strongest defense in the world.
Fine.
Then Axel would test how strong that defense really was.
Over the past year, he had made many preparations for long-range combat.
Axel lowered his body slightly and assumed a sword-drawing stance.
Sentomaru's expression turned serious when he saw it.
He could tell that the next attack would not be simple. Still, he had confidence in his defense. Instead of charging forward, he chose to stand his ground and wait.
Axel's breath stilled.
Power gathered.
Then the saber flashed from its sheath-like position.
A massive blue-white slash erupted from the blade's edge.
Crack!
The Marine saber could not withstand the force. The blade shattered in Axel's hand, but the sword aura had already broken free.
It tore through the air like a living thing.
At first, the slash was only a few meters long. Then it began devouring the energy around it, swelling as it moved. Wind, motion, heat, impact—everything nearby was dragged into it and converted into fuel.
In the blink of an eye, the sword aura grew several times larger.
Sentomaru's face did not change.
He raised his giant axe horizontally in front of him, wrapped it in Haki, and met the incoming slash head-on.
Boom!
The collision shook the ground.
Axel casually tossed the broken hilt aside.
This move had been developed from Cloud Slash. It retained Cloud Slash's trait of absorbing surrounding energy to nourish the sword aura, allowing it to grow after release.
But that was merely the condition needed to trigger it.
The real attack began now.
Axel's mind accelerated.
The calculations unfolded one after another. Direction. Flow. Pressure. Density. Release point. Boundary.
Under the control of vector manipulation, the energy absorbed by Cloud Slash was locked firmly within a single space.
A cage.
A prison.
The gentle wind inside that space was transformed.
The violent energy drawn in by the slash was converted into sharp, explosive wind blades. More and more of them appeared in the air, packed so densely that they seemed to fill every inch of the battlefield around Sentomaru.
For a moment, they simply hung there.
Quiet.
Still.
Almost obedient.
Like sleeping infants suspended in midair.
But the power inside them was anything but gentle. The energy pulsed and strained, unstable and ravenous, like a lion forced to wait behind a thin iron gate.
Sentomaru had only just managed to block the first slash when he noticed the countless blades forming around him.
His face changed.
He tried to move, but it was too late.
With no other choice, he drew his Haki inward and reinforced his body, preparing to endure the assault head-on.
Axel lifted his hand.
"Imperial Blade Prison."
The moment his words fell, the blades moved.
They descended like soldiers obeying an execution order.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The first wave struck.
The instant those blades vanished, the surrounding energy rushed into their former positions and condensed into new blades, continuing the cycle.
This was not a single barrage.
It was a recurring execution.
The attack would continue until Axel's mental strength reached its limit, or until the violent energy within that controlled space finally settled down.
Dense wind blades crashed into Sentomaru from every direction.
His figure disappeared beneath the storm.
The Marines who still had the strength to move tried to rush forward to help him, but they slammed into an invisible barrier before they could get close.
A protective field had formed around the prison.
Some Marines gritted their teeth and hammered against it, only to be thrown back by the violent energy leaking from within. Their remaining firearms had already been destroyed during the earlier assault on Axel. All they could do was watch, pale-faced and helpless, as the storm swallowed Sentomaru.
Inside the prison, Sentomaru curled his body as much as possible.
His arms, axe, and Haki formed a layered defense around him.
Blade after blade struck him.
The first wave, he endured.
The second, he endured.
Then came the third, the fourth, the fifth—
They did not stop.
Sentomaru's teeth clenched.
He had thought the blades would end after one attack. He had misjudged it. At this rate, even his Armament Haki would eventually be worn down.
And once that happened, the wind blades would break through his defense.
He did not know whether his body could withstand being torn apart by that many attacks.
The battle continued.
Not far away, Kizaru's attacks began to change.
Whether intentionally or not, he started using wide-range techniques.
Golden light scattered across the sky. Most of it was intercepted by Issho, but even Issho could not perfectly block an attack like Yasakani no Magatama when it rained down over such a broad area.
Some of the light bullets slipped past like falling stardust and struck the space around Axel's Imperial Blade Prison.
Ripples spread across the invisible boundary.
Axel frowned.
This was the weakness of the technique.
Because it relied on his calculations to maintain its structure, outside interference could cause energy leakage. If the disturbance exceeded what his mind could process, the entire technique would collapse.
It was just like Accelerator from Academy City once gathering the wind of an entire city to create plasma, only for the Sisters to disrupt his calculations by turning fans in different locations and interfering with the airflow.
Axel's computational ability also had limits.
Once the interference surpassed those limits, any technique built upon those calculations would naturally disappear.
Issho noticed Kizaru's intention.
The Admiral was trying to support Sentomaru.
Issho had no intention of allowing that so easily.
Gravity surged.
The pressure around Kizaru thickened, constantly interfering with his elemental transformation. At the same time, Issho continued closing the distance, forcing the Admiral to remain locked in combat.
This time, he would not let Kizaru slip away so easily.
.....
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